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Google Translate – Translation Quality Analysis

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I had promised to show you a real-life example of a simple paragraph that Google Translate translated from English to Spanish.

You should know that all free translation tools like Google Translate excel at working with the Spanish language. In spite of that, the translations are only 80% to 90% accurate at best.

Without further ado, here is the short paragraph translated by Google Translate.

Original English Text

What is Our Vision Statement? (select one)

1.    The partner aiding customer success by offering converting line solutions to run better, faster, and smarter

2.    We help our customers succeed by offering comprehensive web handling solutions

3.    The ONE global partner maximizing customers’ success by offering comprehensive converting line solutions to run better, faster, and smarter

Translation by Google Translate:

¿Cuál es nuestra declaración de visión? (Seleccione uno)

1. El socio que ayuda al éxito del cliente al ofrecer soluciones de línea de conversión para funcionar mejor, más rápido y de manera más inteligente

2. Ayudamos a nuestros clientes a tener éxito ofreciendo soluciones integrales de manejo de bandas

3. El socio global ONE que maximiza el éxito de los clientes al ofrecer soluciones integrales de línea de conversión para funcionar mejor, más rápido y de manera más inteligente

You might be thinking, “this looks okay to me”.

But what if you don’t speak Spanish regularly? And what if you‘re not able to clearly tell the mistakes in the Google translation?

Suffice it to say, you are translating for your Spanish speaking audience. And if there are errors in the translation, they will be able to tell right away.

We shared the translation produced by Google Translate with our team of Spanish translators and this is what they had to say.

¿Cuál es nuestra declaración de visión? (Seleccione una opción)

Feedback:

  •  “declaración de visión” is too literal of a translation and sounds because it should’ve been translated as “visión”.
  • “uno” is a general masculine translation of “one”, but this sentence is actually introducing options (feminine). Therefore, the most accurate translation should be “una opción”.

Somos Eel socio que ayuda contribuye al éxito de losl clientes ofreciendo soluciones de para que su línea de conversión para funcionarfuncione mejor, más rápido y de manera más inteligente

Feedback:

  • For stylistic purposes, it’s better to start all bullets with a verb, in this case “Somos”. This is called parallelism and it contributes to perceiving the whole text as a unit. Also, the implied use of “we” in “somos” gives the idea of a company with a strong philosophy of teamwork and a sense of belonging.
  • The verb “contribuye” is a more formal version than “ayuda” to translate “help”.

Ayudamos a nuestros clientes a tener éxito ofreciendoBrindamos soluciones integrales de manejo de bandas para ayudar a nuestros clientes a alcanzar el éxito

Feedback:

  • The order of the sentence has been changed to put more emphasis on the technical solution and then on the benefit this solution will bring about for the company.

Somos UN ÚNICO socio global ONE que maximiza el éxito de los clientes al ofrecer soluciones integrales de para que su línea de conversión para funcionarfuncione mejor, más rápido y de manera más inteligente

Feedback

  • It’s a serious mistake to treat ONE as if it were a proper name. Whereas, translating it as “UN ÚNICO” gives the idea that there are different brands connecting as ONE company.

As you can see, Google Translate can’t produce an accurate translation even of a simple short paragraph. 

There’s a 12% to 15% error rate. This high of an error rate might be okay for informal or internal content/documents where misunderstandings of the text are tolerable.

However, if you are distributing documents that require 100% accuracy then using Google Translate is not a good choice.

And your target audience might be confused or worse, misunderstand what you are actually trying to communicate.

EPIC Translations would like to suggest that you should be careful when deciding to use Google Translate for formal content/documents.